CPD

Our Policy

“A school is only as good as its teachers. It is teachers who make the difference to children’s life chances…the quest to get more good and outstanding teachers in front of children is a key challenge for all school leaders.” (Perfect Teacher-Led CPD, 2014). To develop our staff we need to continue to get:

teachers excited about teaching.

teachers talking about teaching.

teachers planning and evaluating their teaching together.

teachers observing and learning from each other.

teachers sharing what works with each other.

“It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert” (Malcolm Gladwell). For teachers this would equate to 10 years teaching. Teachers tend to plateau after 2-3 years. (S. Allison). If most teachers stop getting better after 2-3 years, whereas they should be developing their skills over 10 years to reach expert level, then how do we address the professional development deficit? We need to give staff a range of CPD opportunities that will engage, enthuse and motivate them.

In a survey carried out with our staff for the year 2013-14:

How useful did you find the TEEP training this year? 89% (61 people) found it at least useful. 11% (8 people) did not. This suggests that the majority of the staff value the training.

How useful did you find coaching? 72% (18 people) found it useful. 28% (7 people) did not. Only staff who took part in coaching answered this question. This means that on the whole it was successful and those who did not find it useful either do not feel they need to be coached or need a different coach. It is important that all staff have access to a coach if they want coaching, in order for them to develop further.

How useful did you find the Swap Shop activity? 83% (57 people) found it at least useful. 17% (12) did not. This suggests that the majority of the staff value the sharing good practice in this way.

In the next academic year would you like to:

Get involved in coaching: Just under 6% (4 people) of respondents said they wanted to do this.

Prepare TEEP resources for your department. 61% (42 people) of respondents said they wanted to do this. This is a clear indicator that staff want more time to develop resources.

Continue with opportunities for whole school sharing of resources and ideas. 54% (37 people) said they wanted to do this. Again, this supports the sharing of good practice through swap shops, speed dating and TEEP PEEPS.

From this survey the aims of our school’s CPD are as follows:

Aims:

To improve Teaching and learning by embedding TEEP further.

To embed e-learning through iPad training for teachers of Years 7 and 8.

To ensure that all staff have access to a coach.

To give staff time to carry out individual action research which will help develop pedagogy and practice.

To give staff opportunities to share good practice.

In terms of an Ofsted judgment, the importance of using CPD to improve the quality of teaching in a school is clear. The 2014 School Inspection Handbook suggests that inspectors will assess ‘how professional development has improved the quality of teaching’, ‘the extent to which leaders’ monitoring of teaching has identified needs and provided targeted pedagogical guidance and support for teachers’ and the nature and impact of performance management’ (Ofsted, 2014:13) In terms of appraisal, schools are expected to:

Set clear objectives for all teachers relevant to their career stage and linked to The Teachers’ Standards.

Put in place appropriate CPD to support teachers with achieving these objectives.

Monitor and evaluate the impact of this CPD and the progress made towards meeting the objectives.

What we said we were going to do: Inset day 21/11/14

Click to enlarge the slides

This is what we produced

Also look at previous posts with excellent examples of resources shared by Upton staff.

English

One word responses by Mrs McGregor

This powerpoint would be suitable for consolidation of prior learning, and task setting. It requires one-word responses to each slide which could be shouted out (!), or taken round-the-class-without-hesitation, or by no-hands random name selection etc. It includes picture and moving-image stimuli for the boyish “stadium” task. See an examples below.

News paper reports by Mr Crozier:

Media Non-Fiction:

Prepare for learning:Role play activity. Students provided with muted video of Usain Bolt race from London 2012. Students then use their iPad’s to record commentary. Focus here upon using adjectives and adverbs.

Agree Learning Outcomes: Students highlight key stylistics features from newspaper report upon race. Use this to create personalised success criteria for producing a report.

Present New Information: Students create pic-collage of key words and terminology to be included in report.

Construct Meaning: Slow writing activity. Students given strict guidelines about parameters of opening paragraph in order to guide effective construction.

Apply to Demonstrate: Students then complete their article.

Review: Students use own success criteria in order to review success and purple pen their work.

Social Media and middle boys Produced by Mrs Johns, Miss McKevitt and Mr Waite:

This is a lesson aimed at middle ability Year 9 boys, using social media and current trends to inspire them.

Prepare for learning:What do these words have in common: hashtag, selfie, YOLO, bae, like? Which of these might be the odd one out?

Agree Learning Outcomes:To explore, discuss and analyse the impact of social media on the way we communicate.

Present New Information: Ask the question, which is the most commonly used word by children for 2015. Read the hashtag article in ‘The Guardian’ article if set 1 and ‘BBC News’ version if in set 2.Discuss what you think is going on in the video? Play Katy Perry WhatsApp version without sound. See if you can work out what the video is/ where it’s from. Discuss the impact of social media- is it easy to comprehend?

Construct Meaning:Look at an example of social media and its impact on spoken English e.g. WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, kik.

Apply to Demonstrate:How do we communicate using different social media apps? What are pros and cons of WhatsApp, Twitter etc. Feedback findings to rest of the class

Review:Write their own sentence(s) about the impact social media has had on spoken English, using the features of social media communication. E.G. Write a sentence about what they have learned today, using hashtags.

Ideas from the Geography team

Kinaesthetic activities by Miss Connor

Attached are photos of my Middle boys ideas. The focus is on kinaesthetic: use of playdoh, Lego, making pop-ups and card sort competitions.

History

Mr Petty

He started his reflections on middle boys by pondering what is the problem.

Understanding?

Disinterest?

Lazy?

The solution was he did a rough draft paragraph and selected the best (e.g. examples that were approaching the correct standard – didn’t need to be perfect) and used this to Single/Pair/Share. A simple solution to get progress from one lesson to the next. He chose not to share writing which was below standard. Good AfL benefits middle boys. The examples were used to give the criteria of a good answer. It aims to motivate and inspire some of the bottom half of the class who may be lazy/disaffected to aim higher with work. This is an example of the good students work that was shared in the class.

Kids learn enormous amounts from this activity: it develops skills of oracy and of turn taking; they also learn predominantly from each other. Your are not involved in any way other than as a facilitator, and as such, it is a serious, über-constructivist, Ofsted pleaser.

Mrs Vianello:

Particularly good for challenging sensitive topics – Good for engagement

This activity forces students to slow down when looking at a source with depth

Target circle: agree to disagree. Which facts would you place in which parts of the circle. This can be used as an alternative method of essay planning.

Mr Mulhall:

Set the room up into the number of groups needed. Give the students an information pack with details from 5 aspects of learning. Then move around the room and place the piles into the correct table and return to your home table. Once students have all of the sources for their topic students turn that information into a mind map, they then can attach this to an exam question. This can also be used for revision.

Miss Suter:

Moving middles boys from a 5 – 6. Many middle boys don’t like writing, and some of her class are scared of attempting higher level thinking. Focus has been on variation and chunking of activities, appealing to a range of learning styles.

The first resource is my Factory Act lesson which I have shard with you before. The second is my introduction to slavery lesson. The pictures on the slide are cut up into cards but can also be distributed as one big A3 sheet. I’ve also included an extension task and the writing boxes though to save paper the activity could easily be done in books. Both lessons worked well.

Slavery lesson – describe the pictures, explain context, how could these pictures be used by a supporter. The scaffolding behind the question allowed them to reach high level skills stealthily.

Maths

Mr B. Jones:Ball pit race

I have two boxes, each containing plastic play balls numbered 1 to 50. Classes are split into two teams, sometimes by gender and sometime just a random split. Questions are posed to the team, and not only do they have to find the answer, they then have to find the correct ball in the ball pit.

On occasions I have just used one set to play a game. Again they are split into two teams and each team member has a number. I call out a pair of numbers and give them a question. They then have to find the correct ball. A point is awarded to the team whose player has found the ball first.

Modern Foreign Languages

Strategies and resources for motivating middle to lower ability boys:

Information gathering from posters around the classroom. Students have to work in groups and one member at a time moves around the room to find the relevant information and then relays it to the rest of the group. The first team to find all the information wins.

Bingo cards, laminated cards with foreign language questions or information. Students take it in turns to play the role of ‘bingo caller’ to test their knowledge.

Lotto sentences to learn new vocabulary and sentence structures – a more complicated version of bingo!

Word dominoes, students must match the image to the language.

Teacher made online quizzes on websites such as quizlet.com. Scatter games which are timed and encourage students to compete.

Game of slam on the IWB, images are displayed and the screen is frozen. Two students come to the board and the winner is the first one to correctly ‘slam’ the image the teacher says in the target language.

Using mini whiteboards to extend sentences or write draft sentences that students can hold up to the teacher for immediate, regular feedback and praise.

Include factual information e.g students have to create a weekly school canteen menu the target language. Each item of food and drink has a nutritional value and students are given parameters to organise their menu. Students are also given prices and have to stick to a budget.

Grand national plenary slide. The horse will move forward if the student correctly answer the question. Promotes challenge.

Reading comprehensions, number each line of text and question students on the content. The numbers help the boys to focus and encourage them to read the text.

Pictionary on mini whiteboards to learn new vocabulary. Teacher says the sentence and students draw the image or item of vocabulary.

Music

Composition is like a car by Miss C. Thompson:

This resource is aimed at middle boys who are taking GCSE music and it focuses on structuring composition – “Composition is Like a Car”.

The musical stave is laminated are so are the notes, which can be moved anywhere on the stave and are stuck on with blue tack. The staves are stuck up around the room and pupils get into groups of 4/5. I write 5 letters on the board and taking it in turn each member has to put the note in the correct place on the stave. Once all five notes have been placed, one member of the group has to play the notes on the keyboard and try to work out what the piece of music is from the first 5 notes. The first group to place the notes in the correct place and correctly identify the song gets a point. The first group to get three points wins.

Design and Technology

To help raise the attainment of middle and lower boys we have done several things as a department

KS4: Started the coursework earlier – this is allows us more quality interim assessment time and student more time to do DIRT.

KS4: Coursework choices are fewer and more focussed – resourcing and support materials can be better planned.

KS3&4: Where students are struggling, teachers are asked to ‘bridge the gap’ for them – this allows them not to fall behind whilst continuing to make progress – attendance at after school club may be insisted on.

KS4: Where students are seriously struggling teachers are asked to provide them with a rigid framework for their coursework – attendance at after school club may be insisted on.

KS3&4: Exemplar materials are used regularly so that students can view the standards they are trying to achieve.

KS3&4: Some students are provided with individual assistance by our DT Technician.

KS3&4: We have produced Key terms lists and definition so that students can make better progress with the annotation of their coursework.

SSSHWEET SWAP by Mrs Bradbury:

Family Fortunes by Mrs Woodward:

Problem solving by Mrs Skutter:

Ideas researched by Mrs Rogers:

In verbal tennis the students develop skills of listening and responding to each other in pairs. In the first two films, the teacher introduces the task, then in each pair one student begins by naming an animal and the other student has to respond with another animal. The task then becomes more focused, the students have to listen more carefully and think of an animal that is related in some way. Click on the link to find out more:

Listening triads. A useful structure for enabling students to discuss alternative positions, such as those portrayed in concept cartoons, is through students working in groups of three, or ‘listening triads’. The structure is inclusive, as each member of the group has an active role, it also provides an opportunity for students to ‘take turns’ and listen carefully to each other. The teacher can monitor the discussions by listening in to see how ideas are expressed and questioned. There is also a record of the discussion for the students to take forward. Click on the link to find out more:

Just a minute by Mr Rutter:

Revision by Mr Skilling

Key Stage 3 revision Game.

Each team go through their exercise books and find a key word from the topic you’re revising.

“Spokesperson” from the group comes to you at the front of the class and adds their keyword to your list. (AFL)

Class are then given all the key words as a spelling test with the words going onto a mind map diagram. (AFL)

Each group then picks a number from 1 to 10 from the list of the key words you’ve jumbled up.

Depending on the key word chosen the group prepares a 3 min explanation of what the word means and explaining it with relevance to the lesson. They can use their ipad to prepare this. The “spokesperson” will then explain this to the class.

All groups prepare a revision “Mind map” of all the information presented by the 10 groups.

I’ve tried this with a year 7 and 8 group and it went great, very useful for students. Middle attaining boys seem to respond well to this as they like the challenge aspect and being in control as the key words they generate determines the lesson content (within reason !!). The benefit of you being in control of the key word list is you can add or amend this to cover the work you best think the students need.

Play your cards right by Ms Kam

Grouping with cards by Mrs De Costa

Use the playing cards to sort the pupils into groups for group work. You could either use pairs, groups of 4 (same number or same suit) For more able pupils I ask them to make their group up to a certain number

(make sure you sort the cards first so this works) If odd numbers add in a joker and they can pick their own group.

Mr Euson developed this lesson in order to help Year 10 to write a comparative essay about two poems that they had studied.​​​ Click on the link to view:Stealing by Carol Ann Duffy

RS

Miss Summers has produced an outstanding iPad lesson and excellent resources on an introduction to understanding racism click on the links to view:Introduction to Racism, Lesson plan

Maths

Mrs Christianson: The first part of the lesson was corrections on simultaneous equations and then a DIRT extension task on a PowerPoint of harder simultaneous equations. All in purple pen. The second part was an A3 revision sheet with questions all over it, levels given, and written. Students chose where to start, could answer on the sheet or in books. If they got stuck they had to use their books, ask a friend and finally ask me. The plenary was a tricky level 8 question. This was a second set so it was challenging for them.

MFL

Mrs Stanisstreet: Here are the first few slides that I used with my Year 10 who I was observed with. The first one involves them matching up the headlines to the pictures for new innovations in technology.

The extension was that they could try to work out the whole headline. Then then had to say how often they did certain activities relating to technology such as downloading music. The third slide was cut up into strips. Each student had their own name and they had to move around the classroom to find which student in the class had each of the other questions by asking the questions and receiving a ‘sí’ or ‘no’ response. The inspector really praised the quality of the spoken Spanish that the students were producing in the lesson, their written work and their progress over time by use of the PPP and departmental coding system in their books. Click on the link to view: Gadgets and comparisons

Brainfood

Article of the week

Planning to Get Behaviour Right: Research Plus Experience

There is nothing like a discussion about behaviour and discipline, either in the staff room or in the classroom, to get people talking with passion, intensity and all too often from totally different perspectives.

“The area of discipline surfaces so often in all work in schools that we gave it its own category in the analysis of the questionnaire. Staffs are obsessed with it.”

(Canavan, 2003, p. 180)

Staff’s “obsession” with discipline, identified by Canavan (2003) above, is possibly borne out of a reality in which the level of discipline, in the school or class room, has arguably the biggest impact on the quality of our daily lives, working environment and well-being. It is often cited as a reason why teachers, young and old, decide to quit the profession. Students may well feel the same about the impact of behaviour on their working day.

Do you have a “Keep ‘Em In” or a “Kick ‘Em Out” type of approach to School Discipline?

What’s important is that we clearly think through our belief system about school discipline and looked at some research about what actually works. Over time this research can be contextualised alongside what works in the classroom for “me and my students”. As Jason Bangbala once said, “You need to avoid a guts to gob reaction” and this blog is an attempt to move us more towards a “brains to action”response.

What the Research Says

A number of the graphics and the information below have been used with the kind permission of Geoff Petty and are taken from his book, Evidence Based Teaching (2009), which I read when it was first published. Itis well worth reading. His book uses the research of Robert Marzano et al (2003) “Classroom Management that Works”.

Marzano identified four key groups of factors that had a positive impact on behaviour in the classroom and reduced the number of disruptions. The table below summarises these:

Rules & Procedures

Without rules communities can descend into chaos and anarchy with the poorest and weakest in a community (society) becoming the most damaged and disadvantaged.

Coming up with school or class room rules that try to take account of every eventuality can become self-defeating, as no-one can remember all the rules. A parent recently reminded me we use to have a couple of pages of rules in students’ planners which no-one read. For daily operating we need a few agreed and understood rules, possibly between five to seven, that can be used to give direction to a way of living and working together. Our challenge is not simply to impose rules but rather to bring each person to a level of self-control and self-discipline that allows them to be a full, supportive and enriching member of the class and wider community.

It’s interesting to note the basis of laws across Europe and other parts of the World find their origin in the Ten Commandments (these were changed to just two in the New Testament expressed in positive language).The Ten Commandments are a call to a relationship and signpost a direction of travel. They cannot hope to nor did they intend to cover every instance of human behaviour but are a set of guiding principles. For example, there isn’t a commandment banning pulling your brother’s or sister’s hair or giving them a quick dig in the ribs if they annoy you. However, the spirit that goes beyond the letter of the law requires us to treat our brothers and sisters with respect and love and this is the key to their understanding. This thinking is useful for us in the classroom as we set rules and as we shall see later the development of “right” relationships is key to managing behaviour.

Classroom Procedures are usually developed by a teacher over time, however, explicitly thinking about procedures, for the start and end of lessons or during transitions from one activity to another, can help keep a classroom calm and ordered. Whether it is handing out books, equipment or putting things away, developing standard routines that students quickly become familiar with increases the efficient use of time and reduces the mini-moments of disorder that may occur in lessons.

Teacher-Student Relationships

“Don’t smile until Christmas”, is the advice often given to newly qualified teachers. However, the flip side of this advice, “Start smiling before Christmas”, is not so often given to more experienced colleagues. Both have a seed of truth and usefulness in building student-teacher relationships. For newly qualified teachers the generalisation and stereotype is that there tends to be too much co-operation and a lack of assertiveness within the classroom, sometimes confusing a friendly approach with wanting to be a friend. This is the essence of the advice to “Not smile until Christmas” in an attempt to increase dominance in the classroom. However, it is important to note that, as a generalisation, somewhere between six to ten years into teaching a number of teachers lose their sense of care and co-operation in class tending towards a “blitzkrieg” approach that is too dominant and damages relationships.

The graphic below gives some depth to the “fair but firm” discipline often writtenabout in letters of application and talked about in interviews. The two dimensions of dominance and co-operation are held in tension so that a caring but assertive approach is used within the classroom.There must be a balance between a teacher’s control of a class and the co-operation needed to form positive relationships between teachers and students.

Dominance (assertiveness) comes from a strong sense of purpose in pursuing clear goals for learning and for class management; clear leadership with a tendency to guide and control and a willingness to discipline unapologetically. For example, there is a big difference between:

The first may too often sound like a bit of a plea, however, the second is a clear instruction with the inbuilt assumption that it will be followed, hence the “thank you”. It doesn’t need to be said in an angry manner just a clear and assertive voice. This assertiveness must be held in tension with co-operation otherwise it can become aggressive or even in extreme cases draconian. Increasing dominance in the classroom can be achieved by:

Agreeing and then sticking to a simple set of rules and expectations,

Being clear about learning & behavioural goals and

Consistently and assertively using a simple range of proportionate and escalating responses to poor behaviour.

Whilst it can be very hard work, take care not to pass issues or students on too early in any disciplinary process – when you “pass on” you are essentially saying to the student, “I can’t cope but this person can!” Follow up and follow through as much as possible as the benefits in the medium to long term are massive.

Co-operation has a great concern for the needs and opinions of students; teachers are helpful & friendly and teachers use a series of strategies to avoid strife and seek consensus. This also needs to be held in tension with an assertive approach otherwise it can lead to an acceptance of poor standards, too much appeasement and a lack of direction in managing behaviour. If you are in danger of becoming “oppositional” towards students in the class you can increase co-operation by:

Catching students doing things right and praising,

Going the extra mile to support a student with their work,

Taking part in extra-curricular activities and

Taking a general and genuine, but not intrusive, interest in students’ lives and interests. What is the talent of each of the students in your class/form – what do they excel at?

As an aside, it is interesting to note that Hattie’s work shows strong teacher-student relationships as the 11th most important factor in raising achievement. Students do better academically when the relationships in class are right.

Disciplinary Interventions

This is essentially about using “carrots and sticks”. What Marzano (2003) found in his meta-analysis was that appropriate use of sanctions and rewards had a greater impact than using neither or one but not the other. Just using rewards had a bigger impact than just using sanction but this was not as powerful as using both.

The use of sanctions is important to understand – it is the consistency with which they are applied and the inevitability that it will happen much more than the severity that has impact. In fact in Marzano’s work he writes about “mild punishments”. It is important to be proportionate in your response and then follow up and follow through.

There are numerous intervention strategies that can be used in the classroom to get students back on track.

The use of rewards is more important than sanctions, in improving behaviour, with verbal praise, points, stickers, merits, positive notes in books/planners, phone calls home etc. being all fairly standard responses in many classrooms. The addition of certificates, badges, golden time, gifts, vouchers and reward trips often occur at a departmental, phase, faculty or whole school level.

Mental Set

Marzano (2003) identifies the biggest impact on reducing disruptive incidents as the right “Mental Set” which he defines as a conscious control over your thoughts and feelings when you respond to a disruption alongside strategies to develop your awareness of what is going on in your classroom and why – what Marzano refers to as “withitness”.

Experienced teachers and gained wisdom would perhaps give teachers the advice to “Nip it in the bud” and “Don’t take it personally”

“Withitness” is about being present and being a presence. Developing the peripheral vision needed to successfully manage a group of thirty students is an important part of behaviour management. Scanning the classroom whilst teaching and intervening immediately, using the minimal possible intervention to resolve the issue, limits the opportunity for things to spiral out of control.

Moving about the classroom, around the perimeter whenever possible, allows you to have a physical presence in a room whilst ensuring all students remain in view. Take care when working with an individual student that you don’t end up with your back to half the class.

Emotional Objectivity is a real challenge particularly when you are in the “eye of the storm” and a student is behaving badly or being outright offensive. Keeping calm, remaining assertive and managing the situation is crucial.

You’d be surprised how many students in the class think you are doing a great job and handling a difficult situation well – remember to thank the class for their co-operation during the difficult incident if their behaviour warrants it. The misbehaviour isn’t personal.

Putting this all together in a picture is a challenge (see above) but doing it in the classroom is even more challenging. Some people will find some aspects of behaviour management come very naturally and easily to them and other parts are more challenging. It is worth taking an aspect that you wish to improve: focus on it for half a term or a term, practice it and hone it until it becomes second nature.

If you are interested in how, with the support of @TeacherToolkit, this was converted into a planner for use by teachers have a look at the

Good Practice:

Excellent feedback following a visit from the SSAT (Schools’ Network)

Last Thursday we were visited by the Director & CEO of the SSAT (The Schools’ Network) and their Programme Coordinator for Subjects & Teaching and Learning.

We are applying to become a TEEP Ambassador School which will provide us with a quality mark of innovation and improvement in teaching and learning.

TEEP stands for Teacher Effectiveness Enhancement Programme and further information on TEEP at Upton can be found here.

The visit involved observing lessons, asking pupils what they were learning, how they were learning and why it was important. There was then an opportunity to meet with both staff and pupils in a more informal setting.

We were delighted to receive the wonderful feedback below from the visit and see how highly regarded our school is on a national scale.

“……..it was abundantly clear that you are doing so much with TEEP and that your student programmes are having a significant impact on the whole school and extended community. I have requested that SSAT teams contact you regarding Student Leadership and potentially a case study, which could lead to an opportunity to showcase at a national event.”

“I was hugely impressed by the TEEP practice I saw in the brief observations, both in classroom climate and in the obvious planning to nurture the effective learning behaviours in your students.”

“Thanks again, it was an absolute pleasure to immerse ourselves, however briefly, in your wonderful school.”

Just some of the fantastic work being produced at Upton over the last week:

Geography home work on weather completed by Liam Johnson

Becky McGrath has produced this excellent video on her recent progress in Spanish lessons, click on the link below to view:

Katie Spall has produced this excellent piece of work on her favourite artist:

Mr Eunson: I would like to share this excellent trailer produced for a film version of Roald Dahl’s short story, The Landlady. Currently they are studying short stories in English. The Year 8 students who produced this work are Josh Ellis, Ben Collins, Will Simpson, Georgia Griffiths and Joe Horn. The class completed a peer assessment for each trailer. We used Apple TV to view the end products. Click on the link below to view:

Article of the week:

New book and iTunes U course on App Smashing

I’ve been a big fan of Greg Kulowiec’s idea of App Smashing for some time. This is why when I was asked to run some sessions at a conference in Istanbul recently I chose to run a 3 hour session on App Smashing.

The key thing to remember with App Smashing is that there is no limit to what you can do. The only limiting factor is your creativity. The opportunities to collaborate and work with multiple apps on your iPad now are huge.

As many edtech enthusiasts and evangelists will tell you (and rightly so), the purpose of technology in the classroom is to serve learning.

App Smashing is one of those activities with technology that can be lots and lots of fun but can, when being particularly creative, allow the learning to focus too much on the technology rather than the learning activity.

Appsmashing gives us a great opportunity to provide our young people with an avenue to really squeeze the learning opportunities out of their mobile devices. The caveat is:

…don’t focus huge amounts of time on creating brilliant things at the expense of progress.

Recommended Read

1) What does awesome look like: A Teacher Activity Book for iPads in the Classroom

We had 15 educators from around the world contribute to Volume I of What Does Awesome Look Like? Visit our website, EdTechTeacher.org/awesome and enter your email address to download your free copy for viewing on any computer or mobile device.

Good Practice:

The engine room of the school, middle leaders are heads of department or year, or leaders of whole-school areas such as Gifted and Talented or English as an Additional Language. They lead teams of teachers – turning the senior leadership’s strategy into outstanding classroom practice on a daily basis. High-performing middle leaders drive consistent teacher quality in their areas of responsibility through curriculum leadership, lesson observations, holding staff to account and developing staff. They also ensure consistency across the school by collaborating and challenging their fellow middle leaders, influencing whole-school behaviours through sharing, coaching and mentoring. As Russell Hobby (2012) says:

‘Middle leaders have more day-to-day impact on standards than headteachers. Middle leaders are, simply, closer to the action. Teachers’ and pupils’ experience of leadership comes most frequently from their middle leaders. And the essential work of curriculum planning, monitoring and developing teaching belongs with middle leaders.’

In order to develop as a school we need a policy focused on developing a cadre of outstanding middle leaders with the skills to address within-school variation could become critical to closing the achievement gap. If middle leaders are to reduce within school variation, they need to pass two tests: the first is to drive consistently outstanding teaching within departments on a daily basis; and the second test is to work collaboratively across the school to ensure consistency between departments.

So what next?

Middle Leadership Support & Training Possibilities

Develop your Leadership Style, including:

Knowing what inspectors look for in outstanding middle leaders

Benchmarking and auditing your own strengths and weaknesses

Understand how to write, evaluate and make the best use of action plans

Elements of Outstanding Management, including:

Understanding the key differences between leadership and management which style and when it is appropriate

Preparing for Ofsted: know their criteria in your areas and their methods of scrutiny and evaluation

Staff shout out:

Set up a shout out board in your tutor group? Your GCSE/A Level class when others have learnt something from others?

Share and replace:

How It Works:Create a display- preferably by your staff photocopier?Have some plastic folders with a poster in stating-‘PLACE YOUR RESOURCE HERE’
Next to those plastic folders- another poster stating-‘PHOTOCOPY THE RESOURCE YOU WANT- REPLACE IT WITH ANOTHER?’Idea is that staff take a resource sheet that has been left there and simply replace it with another?
It really does work!Try it?Variations:Use it in your dept?
Use it for revision?
Use it as an activity?

Brain Food:

Article of the week:

Coaching v mentoring: what works best for teachers? Teacher Andrew Jones explains the difference between coaching and mentoring, and how they suit different professional development needs.

Most teachers have been mentored at some point in their career – whether as a PGCE student, a newly qualified teacher (NQT) or after a promotion. Not many of us can say we have been “coached”, however. In fact, few of us would be able to give a clear definition or comparison of the two.

Coaching has become a buzzword in education over recent years and there are now numerous organisations promoting it in schools. Many training providers have cottoned on to this method of professional development, which has its roots in business leadership and as a psychological approach to performance in sport.

Mentoring is a supportive, long-term relationship between an experienced mentor and their less experienced mentee. The idea is that the more senior mentor passes on knowledge and guidance as the mentee finds their feet in a new role.

In state education, mentoring is often structured around fulfilling standards, such as performance management targets, which provides plenty of documentary evidence of the mentoring and its outcomes. The process ends when the mentee is confident or capable enough to carry on with their duties without oversight.

Coaching, on the other hand, consists of peer-to-peer discussions that provide the person being coached with objective feedback on their strengths and weaknesses in areas chosen by them. While discussion is led by the coach, they ask questions that allow the professional seeking advice to reflect on their practice and set their own goals for improvement. This is the opposite of mentoring as the coach does not evaluate, judge or set targets, and the person being coached is in full control of the discussion. Unlike mentoring, coaching also gives the recipient more say on the direction of their professional development and encourages them to take more ownership of their CPD.

My experience of coaching has been extremely positive. Although sceptical, perhaps even cynical, at first, I have taken part in an extensive training programme on coaching led by my school’s lead performance coach. Coaching requires practice and observation by the trainer, as well as learning about the theory and practice. Within my training cohort, I coached and was coached by a number of colleagues, from experienced teachers to PGCE students.

The best thing about it was that it gave me the freedom to discuss my needs and wants openly; I wasn’t self-conscious when assessing my strengths and weaknesses and had a chance to properly think about the direction I want my career to go in. My colleagues who coached me kept the conversation focused, realistic and effective. Interestingly, some of the most productive sessions came from being paired up with colleagues in very different roles, such as the site manager. It was also important that my coach was not line managing or hierarchically senior to me to facilitate an open and confidential warts-and-all discussion.

That doesn’t mean coaching should be based on informal chats, however. It requires adequate training – giving objective feedback can be hard for the inexperienced. A coach has to be aware of their own views and any prejudices or preconceptions they might have about the person they’re helping. Theory, training and practice is needed so that you’re mindful of the nuances of language and can control any temptation to be judgemental.

Although mentoring remains an essential component of career development, especially when moving onto a new role or when assessing performance management, coaching can be a useful tool for encouraging an individual to take ownership of their own career path. It’s the ability to take ownership of CPD that really separates coaching from mentoring.

Recommended Reads:

Today the myriad skills needed to be an amazing middle leader in schools can seem mind-boggling. What s more Middle Leaders are taking up the leadership reins after gaining experience for far fewer years than ever before. Whether you are new to this role or are more experienced and aspiring to become a school leader, this book will give you the vital information you need in order to understand what is really important about your role and how to improve your key skills. This practical everyday guide covers: The skills of an amazing Middle Leader Developing excellence in your team and sharing good practice How to inspire others against the backdrop of the busy day to day running of a school Preparation for inspection Effective delegation Middle Leader challenges and next steps. Leading a team and getting the right things done An outstanding guide for an often neglected group.

All successful schools have one thing in common they are full of brilliant teachers. This doesn`t happen by chance. If schools are to develop their teachers into first rate reflective and high performing practitioners, they need a varied and personalised CPD programme based on collaboration and sharing best practice. This book looks at how schools can move away from the one size fits all approach to CPD that still exists in a number of schools, to a CPD programme that will appeal to a range of teachers, unlocking the potential that exists within the staffroom. It`s about excellence from within. The book covers; leadership, school improvement, staff development, teaching excellence, growth mindsets and much more.

Many schools are now recognising that using a coaching model is the very best way to make sustainable improvements in the standard of teaching, performance management and learning across all departments. The Perfect Teacher Coach presents a simple and practical guide to making coaching work well in your school, in order to deliver consistently high standards. This is ever more important with Ofsted increasing the number of lesson observations and ‘evaluations of teaching and learning’, providing a key performance indicator, alongside student outcomes. Everything you need to know about what coaching is and how it works is provided in this book. This includes details of various models of coaching and how to implement a successful model suitable for your school, training your coaches and ensuring you have a sustainable performance management process that really works.

Resources:

1) Guidance: National Professional Qualification for Middle Leadership (NPQML)